The Father of His Country

Fittingly enough on election day, NewMexiKen bring you a link to Jonathan Yardley’s review of His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph Ellis.

The Father of His Country, Ellis correctly observes at the outset, “poses what we might call the Patriarchal Problem in its most virulent form: on Mount Rushmore, the Mall, the dollar bill and the quarter, but always an icon — distant, cold, intimidating.” Ellis’s aim is to get beyond the monument into the man, and he does so in a convincing, plausible way.